A second Bagging Area mix for lockdown, an hour of tunes starting out ambient, taking a turn toward the Balearics and some fizzing electronics before the jetstream sends it back into more ambient, melancholic lands with waves and seagulls. Having the time and space to think about putting these together is one of the upsides of social distancing and isolation.

Hull’s finest outfit Fila Brazillia, formed in 1990 by Steve Cobby and David McSherry, have a new e.p. out, five new songs recorded and released after a sixteen year hiatus. As chance would have it (and I’m blogging very much on the fly this week) the second track fits in very nicely with Monday’s and Tuesday’s tracks (Monday- Manika Kaur dubbed out by Youth. Tuesday- Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini). It’s a sort of making a blogtape. This is Midnight Friends, a haze of shimmering chords, echo- laden piano or organ, repeating melodies and riffs, building and falling away for a good seven and a half minutes, some ambient sounds and bass part coming and going, tickling the nape of your neck.

The other four songs on Fila’s MMXX are worth splashing out for too, there’s some jazzy future funk and the spacey electronic dance of The Silver Scale is a wonderful piece of music.

When we were leaving Rome for the Bay of Naples the receptionist at the hotel we were checking out of asked where we were heading on to. After telling her we were going to Pompeii she looked at us like we were mad- ‘in this heat?!’ she said. And she was right, it was very, very hot. But also a genuinely breathtaking and amazing place. Having walked through the streets of Pompeii we turned into the Forum, the centre of the town, a vast public space with columns and buildings around the four sides and in the distance Vesuvius lurked- the reason the town was destroyed, thousands killed but also the reason the town survived.

Eighteen years ago Fila Brazillia played at Fuji Rock. The 9 song set was recorded, has been cleaned up by Steve Cobby and is about to be released as the first Fila Brazillia album for nearly two decades. You can buy it at Bandcamp and watch A Zed And Two Ls below. The set also features Throwing Down A Shape, New Cannonball, Slow Light, Little Hands Rouge, Ridden Pony, 6ft Wasp, Pissy Willy and Harmonicas Are Shite. By 2000 Cobby and Dave McSherry’s band was a fully fleshed out touring group, playing slow motion funk, disco inflected grooves, jazzy ambient house and every other down tempo genre you can think of. Cross pollination for the nation.

I am 45 today, so happy birthday to me and all that. The first 45rpm single I bought with my own money was Golden Brown by The Stranglers. At least, I think it was the first- I can’t really remember but that’s the story I’ve always told and I’m sticking to it. I remember buying it quite clearly, from a little record shop on Wilmslow Road in Withington. It came out in January 1982 so I would have been 11. The rumour that it was about heroin went round pretty quickly. I liked the harpsichord riff, the strange time signature and Hugh Cornwell’s vocal delivery.

As Ctel posted recently at Acid Ted there was a cover version of Golden Brown by Better Daze and in 1997 a gorgeous dubbed out remix by Fila Brazillia, which washes all over you in ambient waves. Texture like sun.

This is very nice, The Night Before You Came by Paresse, it’s got a touch of the Bladerunner groove to it, sci-fi electronica (good luck with finding it on vinyl, seems to be sold out left, right and centre).

This Craig Bratley remix is a bit of a looker too..

And from yesterday there’s a free download of a remix by Dave McSherry (Fila Brazillia),a whopping 65mb WAV file…